AI employees for ABA clinics
Your ABA billing was running on Thoughtful AI. Now you need it covered.
Thoughtful AI now redirects to SmarterDX. It was rolled up into Smarter Technologies, and its small and mid-size ABA revenue cycle book is being wound down. Clinics that relied on it for billing need coverage before the gap opens.
Relay builds custom AI employees that work on top of the EHR your ABA group already runs: CentralReach, Motivity, AlohaABA, RethinkBH, or something else. They pick up authorization tracking, claim work, and denials. A staff member finalizes every claim.
It is healthcare-specific, and a person at your clinic finalizes every claim. Relay is not an EHR, so there is no rip-and-replace and no handing your billing to an outside service. Sensory Speech & OT, a multi-location pediatric therapy group, ran two AI employees on top of their existing EHR and saw 100% claim accuracy and staff 33% more productive. In 30 minutes we'll show you exactly where the migration is about to leak.
Where your ABA clinic is leaking revenue.
What changed, what it means for your revenue cycle, and how AI employees cover the gap.
Thoughtful AI (thoughtful.ai) now redirects to smarterdx.com. Reporting indicates the business was rolled up into Smarter Technologies, the enterprise revenue-cycle group that combined SmarterDX, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare, and that the small and mid-size ABA revenue cycle book is being wound down as the company moves up-market. We're treating the transition timeline as directional, not a fixed date, so this page won't put a countdown clock on you.
What matters for an ABA operator is simpler. The tool that quietly ran a chunk of your revenue cycle is changing hands. "We'll figure it out later" is how authorizations expire and denials age past the appeal window. Clinics previously on Thoughtful AI are moving now so billing never goes dark in the handoff.
The leak is rarely dramatic, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed. Authorizations that something used to watch start burning down unwatched. Denials land in a queue nobody owns. Claims in flight at the cutover slip past the timely-filing window while everyone is busy standing up the new process.
ABA makes this worse than most. Prior-auth spans multiple service codes (CPT 97151, 97153, 97155, 97156, 97158) with payer-specific documentation, units, and re-auth cadence for each. Authorization burn-down has to be watched across multiple service codes and multiple locations at once. A migration is exactly when those failure surfaces open up.
AI employees for ABA clinics are built to cover exactly this gap. They watch the authorizations, work the denials, and surface the next action for your team. The transition does not have to become a revenue event.
The gap in every migration is coverage. The old tool ran the watches and the queues, and the new process has not caught up yet. Relay fills it without adding a new system of record.
Relay builds AI employees that sit on top of the systems you already run. They read what is happening across those systems and surface the next action for a staff member to approve. The AI does the watching and the drafting, and a person at your clinic finalizes every claim, every appeal, and every submission.
There is no data migration project, no rip-and-replace, and no new system for your team to learn mid-handoff. The AI employee layers onto CentralReach, Motivity, AlohaABA, or RethinkBH and onto your clearinghouse, so the billing work that was leaving with the old tool has somewhere to land on day one.
See where your ABA billing is about to leak.
See where you're leakingAuthorizations, denials, and the claims in flight.
Authorizations
An AI employee tracks every active authorization against the schedule. It flags units about to burn down and end dates about to pass, then drafts the re-auth packet for a staff member to submit. Nothing expires in the gap between tools.
Denials and claims in flight
An AI employee reads each denial and classifies it by reason code. It calculates the appeal-window deadline and drafts the correction or appeal for one-click review and resubmit, so claims caught mid-migration do not age out unworked. A billing coordinator approves every resubmission.
EVV and Medicaid claims
If your ABA group bills Medicaid and uses Electronic Visit Verification (EVV via Sandata or your state's system), an AI employee reconciles visit data to the billing record before the claim goes out. EVV mismatches stop becoming the denial category that buries the rest.
Works on top of the EHR you already run.
Relay is not an EHR. AI employees layer on top of the ABA platform and clearinghouse you already use, never instead of them.
An AI employee works on top of CentralReach through its Enhanced APIs. It reads authorization, scheduling, billing, and claim status, then surfaces the next action for your team. You keep CentralReach, and the AI closes the gaps it leaves to your staff, so your biller spends time approving instead of hunting.
For clinics on Motivity, the AI employee layers on via the Workforce API. It tracks authorizations and feeds the billing and denial work that the migration off Thoughtful AI exposed. There is no replacement and no new system of record, so coverage starts without a parallel migration project running alongside.
AlohaABA is billing-centric, and an AI employee works on top of it to watch authorization burn-down against the schedule and prep denials before the filing window closes. Your biller finalizes each one, so the claims in flight during the handoff stay worked instead of aging out.
An AI employee layers onto RethinkBH to track authorizations across varying state payer rules and route worked denials for one-click resubmit, on top of the platform you already run. Payer variation stops creating blind spots across locations.
For ABA groups on Ensora ABA Suite, an AI employee works on top to watch authorization units, flag billing gaps from the Catalyst sync, and surface denials for staff review. There is no second system of record, and the Catalyst-to-billing handoff stops leaking.
ABA claims run on 837P through a clearinghouse. An AI employee monitors the denial and claim-status queues in Waystar, Availity, or Office Ally, drafts corrections and appeals, and routes them for staff approval. Claims in flight during the migration stay covered instead of aging past the timely-filing window.
Why an AI employee layer, not another rip-and-replace.
Solution-aware buyers comparing options typically land on one of four paths. A new EHR or RCM platform is a migration on top of a migration, exactly when you have the least slack. An AI employee layer leaves your system of record in place and adds capacity on top of it.
| Approach | What it means in a migration | The tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Another all-in-one platform | New data migration, new system to learn, new vendor to onboard | Stacks a second migration on top of the first |
| RCM outsourcer | Takes your revenue cycle off-site | Loses visibility exactly when you need it most |
| Hire more billing staff | Adds headcount and training time | Slowest path to coverage during a live handoff |
| AI employee layer on top of your stack | Works on CentralReach, Motivity, AlohaABA, or RethinkBH today | Additive, no rip-and-replace, a staff member finalizes every claim |
Another all-in-one platform
What it means in a migration
New data migration, new system to learn, new vendor to onboard
The tradeoff
Stacks a second migration on top of the first
RCM outsourcer
What it means in a migration
Takes your revenue cycle off-site
The tradeoff
Loses visibility exactly when you need it most
Hire more billing staff
What it means in a migration
Adds headcount and training time
The tradeoff
Slowest path to coverage during a live handoff
AI employee layer on top of your stack
What it means in a migration
Works on CentralReach, Motivity, AlohaABA, or RethinkBH today
The tradeoff
Additive, no rip-and-replace, a staff member finalizes every claim
It is also a control bet. Relay is human-in-the-loop by design, so a staff member at your clinic finalizes every claim and every appeal. You are not handing your revenue cycle to a black box during the one stretch where you most need to see what is happening. The workflows, the authorization logic, and the denial classification are written for ABA and pediatric therapy, not adapted from a generic billing tool.
How we build it.
We start from the problem you feel, then build the fix on the systems you already run. Discovery and your first working AI employee take 2 to 3 weeks. The full build runs 8 to 12 weeks.
Start with a free 30-minute call
A short call about where the work is piling up and what that is costing you while it stays manual. No commitment, and you leave knowing where you would start.
Discovery and your first AI employee (weeks 1 to 3)
A few working sessions with your team. We map your operation end to end, every workflow across your locations, and find where the money leaks and what closing it is worth. You do not walk away with just a document. By the end of discovery we have built your first working AI employee on top of the systems you already run, so you see it pay off in your real setup before the full build starts.
The full build (8 to 12 weeks, start to finish)
We build the rest of the AI employees you mapped and wire them across every location. Nothing goes out until your team approves it, so you stay in control the whole way. One pediatric therapy client had all seven locations live within 90 days.
Proof: Sensory Speech & Occupational Therapy.
Sensory Speech & OT is a multi-location pediatric speech and OT group. Relay built two AI employees on top of their existing EHR and Drive, with a staff member finalizing every action.
The intake AI employee runs the full new-client lifecycle: it schedules clinic tours, gets ROIs signed, requests records from schools and prior speech and OT clinics, requests IEPs, sends medical orders to the child's PCP and follows up until signed, starts authorization renewals about a month out, and sends three-month progress reports and evaluations to PCPs for signature.
The internal auditing AI employee reviews every note nightly against the clinic's clinical requirements, confirms the billing code matches the note, and after billing finds and appeals denied claims and reconciles remittances against the EHR notes.
The group saw 100% claim accuracy, staff 33% more productive, claim denials down 12%, and faster documentation turnaround. Every result is attributed to the client's own reporting, and results vary by clinic.
What replaces Thoughtful AI for ABA clinics.
Thoughtful AI (thoughtful.ai) now redirects to smarterdx.com. Reporting indicates the business was rolled up into Smarter Technologies, the enterprise revenue-cycle group that combined SmarterDX, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare, and that the small and mid-size ABA RCM book is being wound down as it moves up-market. Treat the exact timeline as directional, and move before billing goes dark in the handoff.
AI employees on top of your existing EHR replace the watching and drafting Thoughtful AI was handling. Relay's AI employees pick up authorization tracking, claim work, and denials across CentralReach, Motivity, AlohaABA, or RethinkBH, and a staff member finalizes every claim. There is no data migration and no new system of record.
No. Relay is not an EHR and does not replace one. The AI employee layer works on top of the EHR and clearinghouse you already use. The migration is additive, not a rip-and-replace stacked on top of the one you are already going through.
Claims stay worked, not aging. An AI employee reads each denial, classifies it by reason code, and calculates the appeal-window deadline, then drafts the correction or appeal for one-click staff review and resubmit. The claims caught at the cutover stay worked instead of aging past the timely-filing window.
Nothing expires in the gap. An AI employee tracks every active authorization against the schedule, flags units about to burn down or end dates about to pass, and drafts the re-auth packet for a staff member to submit.
No. The work stays in your systems. Relay is not an RCM outsourcer, and your team finalizes every action. The AI employee does the watching and the drafting, and a person at your clinic approves every claim, appeal, and submission. That is the human-in-the-loop model.
Yes. AI employees layer on top of each through its API, reading authorizations, scheduling, billing, and claim status, then surfacing the next action for your team. You keep your platform, and the AI closes the gaps it leaves to staff.
It starts with a free 30-minute intro call. We map where your revenue cycle was leaning on the old tool and where it is about to leak. The first two to three weeks are discovery and scoping the first AI employee, and builds run from there. The goal is coverage in place before the handoff opens gaps.
Relay is built for multi-location ABA and pediatric therapy groups. Smarter Technologies and SmarterDX are aimed at enterprise hospital revenue cycle. Relay works on top of the stack you already run and keeps a staff member in the loop on every claim. It is a different buyer and a different model from theirs.
Yes. AI employees track authorizations, denials, and claim status across every location from one view. That is exactly the cross-site visibility a single-tool sunset tends to break. Your team finalizes per location.
Relay is a recurring monthly service. There is no one-time build to buy, and the AI employee layer is an ongoing monthly service on top of your existing stack. Specifics come on the intro call.
In 30 minutes we map where billing was relying on Thoughtful AI. We show you exactly where the migration is about to leak: authorizations, denials, and claims in flight, before any work begins. It is the see-where-you're-leaking conversation, not a pitch for a product you have to rip in.
Keep your ABA billing covered through the handoff.
It's a free 30-minute intro call, no commitment. We'll show you exactly where the migration is about to leak: authorizations, denials, and claims in flight. The work is built for healthcare, and a staff member at your clinic stays in the loop on every claim.